15 Confessions From Amish People Who Were Excommunicated

I’m sure that there are some of you who just don’t really care much about the Amish people in America. If that’s the case, then ask yourself why you’re looking at this article in the first place. Everyone finds Amish people fascinating to some extent. Whether it’s because of their strict rules, crazy beliefs, or drab outfits.

Either way, there is likely something that interests you about the Amish. And this article will hopefully help you learn more about how horrible and fascinating this crazy religion is. Religions are supposed to be organizations where people pretend they’re far more moral than everyone else, right? Well, below are a bunch of confessions from former Amish people…and they are not moral stories.

Think of the puppy mills where poor puppies are bred over and over, starved and eventually drowned, or shot en masse. Or think about the amount of abuse that goes on, whether it’s in the form of beatings or something far naughtier and way more scarring. OR what about Amish kids eating rotten food that was meant for the pigs because the poor kids are starving on the farm!?

15.Woman Is Shamed Publicly And Goes Crazy…

“The worst possible punishment as an Amish woman is to be singled out in front of other people because attention is immodest. This young woman went insane after this happened, and the bishop that shamed her was her father.”

This is an account from a former Amish man who witnessed this public shaming that was given to this woman by her own father! And what was the whole shaming about? She fell in love. But it’s not so simple for her. She fell in love with an “Englisher”. This means that she fell in love with a regular man from our modern society. She was publicly shamed, but not excommunicated. And this shaming is such a horrible thing to happen in the Amish community that she actually had a mental break. But they definitely all believe in love and forgiveness…

14.Amish Are Polluting And Poisoning Themselves

One Amish man realized that the farming that he and his community were doing actually happened to be hurting the world around them as well as themselves. He started to notice more constant illnesses and a lack of fish from the water. He left the community, unable to stand hurting the world that god apparently gave to them to take care of. Doing some further digging into this issue, it turns out that this guy was right! The amount of E. coli in well water throughout at least Pennsylvania Amish communities is huge! And the nitrate levels in those wells were much higher than the EPA allows. Not to mention that the fertilizer and manure that the Amish use is poisoning the fish population in the Chesapeake Bay. But the government won’t do anything about it because the head of the EPA right now doesn’t know anything about the environment.

13.Rumspringa Isn’t Always A Big Party

So, for those of you who don’t know about it, Rumspringa is a certain point in the life of an Amish teenager where they are given a year to discover what modern life is life outside of the community so they can decide if they want to stay with their family or completely cut ties with them and live in the real world. You can already see how that decision is hard. Leave your family and friends behind forever and go out into a world you know nothing about…or stay home and go on with life as usual. It’s pretty easy for most teens to stay home. And often time, those teens hardly go out to discover anything anyway. Some families only give their kids a few days to see what the modern world is like. A former Amish man once mentioned that most Rumspringa teens just stayed home in his community. He did too. He left after the fact.

12.Parents Spend Their Kids’ Money

I discovered through the story of a former member of an Amish community that most Amish families take the paychecks of their children and then give out spending money that is pretty pitiful. I think that’s pretty crazy. Apparently, the standard amount of an Amish kid’s money that is given back to them for spending is only 10%. The money system of the Amish community is a lot like that of Scientology! And that’s pretty damn crazy. When you’re a deep-set member of Scientology, huge chunks of your paychecks are given to the church to keep them going. But I have a feeling that taking your kids’ money is a pretty lame way of teaching them how to earn and support. You’re just teaching them how to steal from children. I thought religion was supposed to be moral…

11.Puppy Mills Are Real And Disgusting!

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Amish puppy mills, but they are a very real and very disturbing and disgusting thing. Reports from one former Amish man about the mills is terrifying. First of all, the Amish “debark” the puppies by shoving metal pipes down their throats…they then use the puppies for breeding. Once they’re no longer good for breeding, what do they do to the puppies? They shoot them. Or drown them. Or, in one case that the man recalls, they put them through a wood chipper. I can’t f*cking imagine doing that to one puppy, let alone 80 puppies one after the other. Looking up some additional stats on the puppy mills, over 5 million puppies have been killed over the course of one year. That is apparently over 11,000 puppies being murdered every day of the year! But the government won’t do anything because puppies are “cattle” to the Amish and they can do whatever they want…

10.Murder Is Hushed Up

Alright, this shot is actually from a film about an Amish murder starring Neve Campbell. But that has nothing to do with this actual story. An Amish man by the name of David Yoder confesses that his sister confessed to him that she killed his niece. He didn’t detail the event, but he did mention what the elders of the community said about it, “This can never leave this room. It has to remain this way for the betterment of community.” So, not only do the Amish poison water, abuse each other, murder puppies, inbreed, and stunt education…but they also cover up murder. To be fair, there have been cases that definitely came out and involved the police and people were sent to prison, but this confession does really make me wonder how many crimes are committed that never are heard about on the outside world; in our modern society.

9.Rotten Food For The Pigs Is Eaten By Starving Kids

The wife of an elder apparently went over to one of the homes in the community and gave some burnt and half-rotten food to the boy there for feeding the pigs. Well, the boy in question thought that the food might actually be bad for the pigs because of the rot. But that didn’t stop him and his sister from doing? Eating the food themselves. Why would they eat burnt and half-rotten food? Because they were starved on their farm. They went to school, worked the rest of the day/evening, and were hardly fed at all. Thankfully, that boy is now a man who no longer lives in the Amish community. Considering all of the crazy sh*t that goes on in these little groups I’m amazed that the government doesn’t step in to deal with this.

8.Woman Is Hit For Saying “No” To Her Son…

Alright, this is one of the most terrifying stories I’ve come across with regards to abuse in the Amish community. A wife and mother said “no” to her three-year-old son about something that the boy wanted. That seems to make sense. “No” is said to kids all the time. But the husband and father of the household didn’t take it so easily. You see, because the little boy was male (even if he was only three) he had more authority than the adult woman. So what did the husband and father do? He beat his wife! He beat his wife because she said “no” to a three-year-old! What the hell is wrong with people? If this is supposed to be a religion of morality then I think there might be more than a few issues with the teachings.

7.Breastfeeding Is Birth Control?

Alright, so there is some sort of scientific evidence for this, but it’s definitely not a sure thing. The chances of getting pregnant while breastfeeding are slimmed somewhat. So you might find that more than a few Amish women will be breastfeeding a child alternatively in order to have some form of birth control. Personally, I think that’s a little insane, but according to several confessions, this is actually a regular practise in several Amish communities. The reason they do this, of course, is because they’re not allowed to use proper medical birth control unless they actually need it for a serious medical condition. And even then, some communities still would rather someone die than make use of modern society’s medicine.

6.Girl Dies In Fire Because Of Modesty Rules

This is probably one of the most tragic things I’ve ever heard come from the Amish community. There was an Amish girl whose best friend was seriously burned in a kitchen fire. She was only 15 years old. Now, the f*cked up thing is that the girl could have lived. She could have made it and survived her burns. But why didn’t she? Because of Amish rules about modesty. You see, her little brothers were at the scene, and because of this, she wasn’t allowed to remove her “heavy polyester dress”. So, because she was forbidden to show her skin to men, even just her little brothers, while she was burning, she ended up dying. I can’t imagine that she was even that obedient to her religion at that point. I don’t know if I would find my family’s rules more important than my life…that’s how messed Amish life is.

5.A Man Is Excommunicated Because Of The Bible…?

There was an Amish man who decided he wanted to read the Bible. That’s not too surprising since they all read the Bible. But he read past the regular passages that the elders read in their services. And he realized that the elders were keeping things from the community. While the elders were berating a woman for some poor behaviour, the man stood up for her and backed up his statements with verses from the Bible. The elders attempted to defend themselves but ultimately called on the bishops to put the guy on trial for disobedience. What did the bishops do? They excommunicated the guy because they decided “the traditions of [their] forefathers [was] more important than an honest reading of scripture“. So, this guy got the boot from the Amish community for being too faithful.

4.There Is A Very Quiet Culture Of Abuse

At only 22 years old, Mary Byler escaped from the Amish community but not without some pretty deep scars. “If somebody was r*ping me, I’d look up to ceiling, count the blocks or count the cracks in the wall, or [I would be] completely not there emotionally. I would have committed suicide many times over if I wouldn’t [have been] strong.” Mary was first abused in this manner when she was only six years old. It started with her stepfather, but even her older brother abused her all the way through her teen years. What finally caused her to leave? The discovered that one of her brothers was abusing her four-year-old sister in the same way. She fled and got the police involved. Each brother and the father was punished, but not nearly enough. Months of probation rather than serving time.

3.Shunned And Arrested. For Being Moral…

So, an Amish man was shunned by his community because he spoke out against a woman being given communion. The reason he spoke out was that she was accused of adultery. Now, just an accusation shouldn’t be enough so I think he was speaking out of place, but he was just acting in a religiously moral way. So, that shouldn’t have been an issue. But, because the bishop was the one giving the woman communion, he decided to use his power to shun the man for speaking against his actions. This led the man to be basically ignored by his wife and having his little kids calling him crazy. It got to the point that the man forced his wife to confront him in their truck (since women are property) and in this one case, the Amish actually decided to call the police on him for trying to talk to his wife.

2.Modern Life Is Called The Devil’s Playground

I think you probably know by now that the Amish are pretty damn hypocritical. I don’t think there’s any way you could not see that. They call our modern way of living the “Devil’s Playground”. Which is very interesting because as much as they try not to use electricity or any sort of modern comforts, they still seem to sneak television sets or cell phones into the home. At least according to one formerly Amish man. Of course, even with those few comforts, they do everything they can to teach their children that everything out of their community is evil. And when I say teach…I guess I mean only until grade eight because that’s usually when education stops for an Amish kid according to this same former Amish man. How could you live in the real world without some education today?

1.Inbreeding And Genetic Disorders

It’s crazy enough when a former Amish person comes out and says that they were aware of first cousins marrying each other and having children in their communities without any sort of care about what that might mean when it comes to the effect it might have on their kids. Of course, that can’t be too shocking when they don’t get educated past the eighth grade. But it’s far crazier to know that the whole Amish community was started by basically no more than 200 people back in the 1800s. So…it is more than likely that without proper screening these people are going to end up just making their gene pool as full of poison as their wells. But they can’t use any sort of screening process because that would mean using the technology of modern society…